Toyota joins Coronavirus fight

Australia’s number one vehicle brand Toyota has signalled its willingness to join the fight against the Coronavirus.

While it stopped making cars in Australia in 2017, Toyota Australia still has substantial design, engineering and 3D printing capabilities in Australia and carsales understands these have been volunteered to battle the pandemic.

Those capabilities potentially give it the ability to manufacture parts for ventilators and personal protective equipment, both of which are in short supply ahead of the pandemic’s anticipated Australian peak in the next few months.

As we’ve reported, Ford Australia, the Walkinshaw Group and Premcar are significant members of the local automotive industry to also have volunteered their design, engineering and manufacturing skills to fight the coronavirus.

While Toyota’s local engineering, design and manufacturing facilities are quite small, they do service demand both here and overseas.

Known as Product Design, it falls within Toyota Australia’s Product Planning and Development Division. We reported on the Toyota Product Design, its skill set and ambitions in 2018.

Toyota Australia has been contacted for comment but was yet to respond as this story was published.

It is expected that any Toyota involvement in the Coronavirus fight will be formally explained in the next few days.

Ford is Australia’s largest automotive employer, with about 2000 engineers, designers and other technical staff working across four sites in Victoria.

Although it gave up mass production in Australia in 2016 it still has prototyping and 3D printing capabilities and has retained a small assembly line which currently builds the Mustang R-Spec.

While it was previously reported that Ford was approached by government to seek its skills, carsales now understands Ford made first contact in this matter.